It is accordingly known, in particular as regards filling-yarn knitting but also in a galloon crocheting machines, to mount eye needles in the form of so-called segments, each segment containing a row of eye needles in a metal or plastic support and housed parallel to each other by their main planes and in a mutually equidistant manner. As a rule the eye needles are used to feed warp-yarns when making ribbons or tapes, especially elastic ones.
A need exists for bands or ribbons containing more than 10 or 12 warps, and possibly also with many elastic filaments per centimeter of machine width. This means that the eye needles must be case or injection-molded in an increasingly denser manner into a support. If for instance 12 needles must be housed per cm of machine width, there will be a needle every 0.83 mm. In conventional eye needles, the stem already approximately assumes this width, and accordingly no space is left in which to pour the casting material, namely a light-alloy or plastic, to anchor the needle stems.
Therefore very small and thin needles are used for high yarn densities. The strength of such needles is however inadequate. They bend, and thereby on occasion warps are placed into the wrong knitting needle heads. Furthermore, thin eye needles wear comparatively rapidly.
By means of the present invention it is possible to use eye needles having a thickness near the eye of only about 0.3 mm while simultaneously having rugged and comparatively thick stems. At the same time, a needle density of 12 and more per centimeter of machine width is possible.